Conn. School Shooting: Classroom Survivor Played Dead

ABC News(NEWTOWN, Conn.) -- The lone survivor of one of the two Sandy Hook Elementary School first-grade classrooms where Adam Lanza allegedly shot and killed 20 children tricked the gunman by playing dead, the girl’s pastor said.

“She ran out of the school building covered from head to toe with blood and the first thing she said to her mom was, ‘Mommy, I’m OK but all my friends are dead,’” Pastor Jim Solomon told ABC News’ Lara Spencer this weekend.

“Somehow, in that moment, by God’s grace, [she] was able to act as she was already deceased,” he said.

The girl, a 6-year-old whose name is not being released for privacy reasons, was the first student to emerge from the lockdown at Sandy Hook, Solomon said. He said the young girl described the shooter to her mom in a way that only a young child can.

“Well, she saw someone who she felt was angry and someone she felt was very mad,” Solomon said. “I think it’s impossible outside of divine intervention. She has wisdom beyond her years, for sure.”

Of the 20 children killed last Friday in the Newtown, Conn., school, eight were boys and 12 were girls. Six staff members -- all female -- were also killed.

“The mom told me -- and I thought this was very insightful -- that she was suffering from what she felt was survivor’s guilt because so many of her friends no longer have their children but she has hers,” Solomon said.

“I think as well as you can expect them to,” he said of how the girl’s mother and father are handling the trauma. “I don’t know that I would have the type of faith that they have if the same thing happened to me.”